OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Manchester Syntax W3C Working Group Note 18 October 2012 OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Manchester Syntax W3C Working Group Note 18 October 2012 This version: http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/NOTE-owl2-manchester-syntax-20121018/ Latest version: http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-manchester-syntax/ Previous version: http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/NOTE-owl2-manchester-syntax-20091027/ Authors: Matthew Horridge, University of Manchester Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Nuance Communications A color-coded version of this document showing changes made since the previous version is also available. This document is also available in these non-normative formats: PDF version. Copyright © 2012 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark and document use rules apply. Abstract The OWL 2 Web Ontology Language, informally OWL 2, is an ontology language for the Semantic Web with formally defined meaning. OWL 2 ontologies provide classes, properties, individuals, and data values and are stored as Semantic Web documents. OWL 2 ontologies can be used along with information written in RDF, and OWL 2 ontologies themselves are primarily exchanged as RDF documents. The OWL 2 Document Overview describes the overall state of OWL 2, and should be read before other OWL 2 documents. The Manchester syntax is a user-friendly compact syntax for OWL 2 ontologies; it is frame-based, as opposed to the axiom-based other syntaxes for OWL 2. The Manchester Syntax is used in the OWL 2 Primer, and this document provides the language used there. It is expected that tools will extend the Manchester Syntax for their own purposes, and tool builders may collaboratively extend the common language. Status of this Document May Be Superseded This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/. Summary of Changes There have been no substantive changes since the previous version. For details on the minor changes see the change log and color-coded diff. Please Send Comments Please send any comments to [email protected] (public archive). Although work on this document by the OWL Working Group is complete, comments may be addressed in the errata or in future revisions. Open discussion among developers is welcome at [email protected] (public archive). No Endorsement Publication as a Working Group Note does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress. Patents This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. The group does not expect this document to become a W3C Recommendation. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. Table of Contents • 1 Introduction • 2 The Grammar ◦ 2.1 IRIs, Integers, Literals, and Entities ◦ 2.2 Ontologies and Annotations ◦ 2.3 Property and Datatype Expressions ◦ 2.4 Descriptions ◦ 2.5 Frames and Miscellaneous ◦ 2.6 Global Concerns • 3 Quick Reference • 4 Appendix: Translation to and from OWL 2 Functional-Style Syntax ◦ 4.1 Informal Description ◦ 4.2 Formal Description for Mapping to OWL 2 Functional-Style Syntax ◦ 4.3 Formal Description for Mapping from OWL 2 Functional-Style Syntax Page 1 of 9 http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/NOTE-owl2-manchester-syntax-20121018/ OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Manchester Syntax W3C Working Group Note 18 October 2012 • 5 Appendix: Internet Media Type, File Extension and Macintosh File Type • 6 Appendix: Change Log (Informative) ◦ 6.1 Changes Since Working Group Note ◦ 6.2 Changes Since Previous Working Draft • 7 References ◦ 7.1 Normative References ◦ 7.2 Non-normative References 1 Introduction The Manchester OWL syntax is a user-friendly syntax for OWL 2 descriptions, but it can also be used to write entire OWL 2 ontologies. The original version of the Manchester OWL syntax [Manchester OWL DL Syntax] was created for OWL 1 [OWL Semantics and Abstract Syntax]; it is here updated for OWL 2 [OWL 2 Specification]. The Manchester syntax is used in Protégé 4 [Protégé 4] and TopBraid Composer® [TopBraid Composer], particularly for entering and displaying descriptions associated with classes. Some tools (e.g., Protégé 4) extend the syntax to allow even more compact presentation in some situations (e.g., for explanation) or to replace IRIs by label values, but this document does not include any of these special-purpose extensions. The Manchester OWL syntax gathers together information about names in a frame-like manner, as opposed to RDF/XML [RDF Syntax], the functional-style syntax for OWL 2 [OWL 2 Specification], and the XML syntax for OWL 2 [OWL 2 XML Serialization]. It is thus closer to the abstract syntax for OWL 1 [OWL Semantics and Abstract Syntax], than the above syntaxes for OWL 2. Nevertheless, parsing the Manchester OWL syntax into the OWL 2 structural specification is quite easy, as it is easy to identify the axioms inside each frame. As the Manchester syntax is frame-based, it cannot directly handle all OWL 2 ontologies. However, there is a simple transform that will take any OWL 2 ontology that does not overload between object, data, and annotation properties or between classes and datatypes into a form that can be written in the Manchester syntax. An example ontology in the Manchester OWL syntax can be found in the OWL Primer [OWL 2 Primer]. 2 The Grammar The Manchester syntax for OWL 2 ontologies is defined using a standard BNF notation, which is summarized in the table below. Table 1. The BNF Notation Used in this Document Construct Syntax Example non-terminal symbols boldface ClassExpression terminal symbols single quoted 'PropertyRange' zero or more curly braces { ClassExpression } zero or one square brackets [ ClassExpression ] alternative vertical bar Assertion | Declaration grouping parentheses dataPropertyExpression ) Because comma-separated lists occur in very many places in the syntax, to save space the grammar has three meta-productions, one for non-empty lists, one for lists of minimum length two, and one for non-empty lists with annotations in them. <NT>List ::= <NT> { ',' <NT> } <NT>2List ::= <NT> ',' <NT>List <NT>AnnotatedList ::= [annotations] <NT> { ',' [annotations] <NT> } Documents in the Manchester OWL syntax form OWL 2 ontologies and consist of sequences of Unicode characters [UNICODE] and are encoded in UTF-8 [RFC 3629]. The grammar for the Manchester syntax does not explicitly show white space. White space is allowed between any two terminals or non-terminals except inside nonNegativeInteger, prefixName, IRI, and literal. White space is required between two terminals or non-terminals if its removal could cause ambiguity. Generally this means requiring white space except before and after punctuation (e.g., commas, parentheses, braces, and brackets). White space is a sequence of blanks (U+20), tabs (U+9), line feeds (U+A), carriage returns (U+D), and comments. Comments are maximal sequences of Unicode characters starting with a '#' and not containing a line feed or a carriage return. Note that comments are only recognized where white space is allowed, and thus not inside the above non-terminals. 2.1 IRIs, Integers, Literals, and Entities Names are IRIs (the successors of URIs) and can either be given in full or can be abbreviated similar to as in SPARQL [SPARQL]. Abbreviated IRIs consist of an optional colon-terminated prefix followed by a local part. Prefixes in abbreviated IRIs must not match any of the keywords of this syntax. Prefixes should begin with lower case letters so that they do not clash with colon-terminated keywords introduced in future versions of this syntax. Local parts with no prefix are expanded as if they had an initial colon and must not match any keyword of this syntax. This syntax uses short forms for common data values, e.g., strings and numbers, and short forms for some common datatypes, e.g., integer. These correspond to the obvious long forms. fullIRI := an IRI as defined in [RFC 3987], enclosed in a pair of < (U+3C) and > (U+3E) characters prefixName := a finite sequence of characters matching the PNAME_NS production of [SPARQL] and not matching any of the keyword terminals of the syntax abbreviatedIRI := a finite sequence of characters matching the PNAME_LN production of [SPARQL] simpleIRI := a finite sequence of characters matching the PN_LOCAL production of [SPARQL] and not matching any of the keyword terminals of the syntax IRI := fullIRI | abbreviatedIRI | simpleIRI nonNegativeInteger ::= zero | positiveInteger positiveInteger ::= nonZero { digit } digits ::= digit { digit } digit ::= zero | nonZero nonZero := '1' | '2' | '3' | '4' | '5' | '6' | '7' | '8' | '9' zero ::= '0' Page 2 of 9 http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/NOTE-owl2-manchester-syntax-20121018/ OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Manchester Syntax W3C Working Group Note 18 October 2012 classIRI ::= IRI Datatype ::= datatypeIRI | 'integer' | 'decimal' | 'float' | 'string' datatypeIRI ::= IRI objectPropertyIRI ::= IRI dataPropertyIRI